Hardware recommendations
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Ati cards have been known to have a few glithes in the past for GPU intensive non game apps, however recently AMD merged/aquired them and it is said that the new generation cards coupled with AMD mobo's would not only solve such issues but also exceed nvidia benchmarks.
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Hi All,
This topic is very interesting. I'm using an old 128MB 1400 quadro board, and I`m looking for an upgrade. My system is fast with everything (XP64SP2), except SU - my gigantic models take up to 10~15 minutes just to change views (transitions/shadows disabled). Those models, on wireframe mode, it still take some minutes to change views too. Can the new GTX boards handle SU like professional boards? On SU, I'm in doubt about the advantages - if any - of the quadros over the newer GTX. Since I render Maxwell on a farm, this SU performance problem matters. Also, can anyone post any links to benchmarks of nvidia versus amd? I found that ati/amd drivers still have less support for OpenGL than NVidia.Thanks for any advice.
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I was wondering why everyone only talks about Nvidia cards? Surely, they are great cards, but AMD seems to have some very competitive cards out right now. They big draw to Nvidia for me, right now, is the prospect of CUDA, but as that hasn't come out yet I think I could wait and in a year or so, buy a budget Nvidia card that would be easily comparable to their current high-end.
The problem with AMD seems to be that the cards run really hot. Still, at such a price difference you could afford a better cooling system and/or ventilated case.Is there a real problem with SU using AMD cards? That would be hard to believe considering the amount of people using their cards. Does anyone here use a current-gen AMD card?
Here is an article [ http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964.html ] reviewing the 4870 by tomshardware.com -- a very reputable online tech source. Also, notice the 4850 [which can be found for $150 or less] which is not much behind the more expensive 4870/GTX 260... I would imagine a crossfire 4850 setup [~$300] could be pretty sweet -- again, if you could keep it cool.
I would love to hear people's thoughts on this.
[Here's a section from the conclusion on this review]
@unknownuser said:
**For once, our assessment of this Radeon HD 4870 will be simple: It’s an excellent high-end graphics card! With the same architecture and most of the strong points of the Radeon HD 4850, it’s in a higher category performance- and price-wise. The bottom line: Though it’s faster by an average of 6% (and in the majority of our tests) than the GeForce GTX 260, it sells for $299 – $150 less than the competing Nvidia card! Even the top-end card from Nvidia, the GeForce GTX 280 – souped up with more transistors, twice as much memory and higher clock speeds – is not that far ahead. It showed only 13% better performance than the Radeon HD 4870, though it costs twice as much.
A few points enter into the picture to make it bit less idyllic, however. First, the Radeon HD 4870 suffers slightly from the competition with its own stable mate, the HD 4850, since the smaller card has a better performance/price ratio (only 23% less performance at a price that is 60% lower). And, AMD has totally reversed its strong and weak points compared to the preceding generation, and in particular to the Radeon HD 3870 — The Radeon HD 4870’s performance is good with antialiasing enabled (despite having only 512 MB of memory), but it consumes a lot more power at idle and also under load (and more than the GeForce GTX 260). And it’s not exactly a model of silent performance, though it’s still a lot quieter than the GeForce GTX 260, and without heating up the inside of your case.**
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The problem with AMD/ATi graphics cards is not about the incapability of hardware, it seems like a driver coding issue that isn't getting resolved.
However some people seem be using it without a problem, like when I had my old machine with the ATi Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB, didn't have any trouble using it with SU, just frikkin slow and almost unusable at times.
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That card would've been before the ATI/AMD merger, I think. I've heard that they're graphic line is much better since the merger.
I'm not such a fan of AMD but I imagine I'll be buying a system sometime in the next year and have been starting to look around to see what's out there.
Personally I think that CUDA looks amazing... I really hope that pick's up in the very near future. Intel's philosophy of continually adding more and more cores seems ridiculous -- much too brute force -- while GPU [through CUDA] seems a very elegant use of hardware we already have [to a much larger result that merely CPU].
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Regarding ATI/AMD it would be interesting to start hearing some feedback as to whether the 'old' issues still exist or not. However, at this point I think for SU users it's still risky to run out and buy an ATI card even if they're 'better.' You can buy a card w/ uber framerates and clockspeeds that'll make you dizzy but if you can't pick the face of a wall it's worthless.
-Brodie
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This can have real significance under SU:
http://www.geeks3d.com/?page_id=7
Where can we find info about OpenGL resources used by SU? Google people, anyone?
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Could well be, maybe if anyone is experiancing any GPU issues this may be an option ... any lab rats out there wanna give it a go?
Nice find Zilonex, you may have a cure for many distressed users.
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@unknownuser said:
You can buy a card w/ uber framerates and clockspeeds that'll make you dizzy
The usual card tests found in magazines etc are rather useless for choosing a card to use with SU, as they seldom test OpenGL performance. Magazine editors are almost exclusively interested in DirectX performance, that is irrelevant to SU and mostly applies to games.
I add one warning to notebook buyers. Driver upgrades to notebook graphics are almost exclusively available only through the notebook manufacturers, and most often than not the upgrades are few and long between. I was lucky in that the driver shipped with my Nvidia-equipped Acer luggable runs SU OK, as there has been no upgrade to that at all in four years. If you can, choose a graphics subsystem supported directly by the graphics manufacturer.
Anssi
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Anssi,
I was under the same impression for years regarding my nVidia Geforce Go7400 equipped laptop, but finally found a custom driver update solution on the laptopvideo2go website- it took a few tries of downloading supposedly compatible drivers, uninstalling old ones, running a registry cleaner and reinstalling new drivers before I found one that runs properly on my card, but FINALLY I have drivers just a few months old rather than the 3 yr old ones that were bundled with my laptop. The key is to remember to copy/paste the modified .inf file so that the driver installer will allow the modded drivers to be installed on your machine.
http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/
Sadly they're only available for nvidia cards, but perhaps there's another site that specialises in ATI?
Hope this helps,
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Jackson is right.
The laptopvideo2go website is a MUST for laptop SU users. -
Hi Tommy and ALL,
Are there any news about the survey? I found this link ([http://www.tomshardware.com/de/GTX-280-260-GT200-Geforce-Nvidia,testberichte-240063-22.html](http://www.tomshardware.com/de/GTX-280-260-GT200-Geforce-Nvidia,testberichte-240063-22.html)), and this table ([http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/9/110961/original/062.gif](http://media.bestofmicro.com/M/9/110961/original/062.gif)) shows impressive data: under SPECViewPerf 10 benchmark, the 3870x2 score was about twice of the gtx280. I bought cg hardware for more than 15 years. So I like a lot the nv initiatives, like the future MentalRAY on hardware one - truly gold for cg professionals. But those numbers show very deceptive performance for the gtx280, and we all know that it is a card with a very impressive gpu. If anyone could post links or info to viewperf 10 and other benchmarks with the gtx280 I will be very glad of. What's the point? Well, nv could boost a lot their selling numbers if leave this professional versus gaming boards nonsense. Today, all the technological differences between the "gaming" and the "quadros" are vaporware - and we all know this. The results are clear: nv is losing a lot of key and loyal customers - I'm one of them. -
Hai everyone on this forum, I'm newbie in this useful forum,,,sorry for my english if it's not good,I'm from Indonesia,,,i just wanna ask you guys about product called WACOM TABLET,,,,is it usefull for using this product to draw the 3D things like SketchUp ? because there is a great sale for this product in my country,,,,i think thats a cool gadget for drawing,,,,,the point about my question , is this cool stuff can help increasing our performance for drawing in 3d, especially for SketchUp,? thanks guys,,,,once again, sorry for my english,,,,
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I use a wacom in SU, although i wouldnt say it increases the speed at which i model it is a more pleasant experience. They are also far superior for doing things in photoshop, which can often be a big part of making good models in SU.
Overall id say go for it. They take a bit of getting used to but they are very nice to use once you get used to it.
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Thanks remus for your opinion,,,,,what type of WACOM you have ? is it BAMBOO, BAMBOO FUN , GRAPHIRE, OR INTUOS ? OR WHICH ONE IS THE AS YOU KNOW,,,,I KNOW THERE IS A HIGH END TYPE FOR THIS GADGET, BUT ONLY A FEW TYPE ABOVE ENOUGH FOR MY BUDGET RIGHT NOW.....
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Ive got a bamboo. It works fine for me, although i imagine if your going to be doing a lot of drawing in photoshop then it would be orth forking out the extra cash for an intuos.
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Hi Tiger and welcome to the forum. There is a wacom tablet topic already, please, go on with this discussion there as this topic is dedicated to the performance of SU on different computers.
Thanks.
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@sketchup guide tommy said:
Hi Everyone,
I've created a survey that asks a few questions about your computer. Not to worry, this survey is totally anonymous. If SketchUp is screaming fast on your computer, we want to know. If SketchUp barely runs at all, we want to know that too. If you have a number of
computers, new and old, feel free to take the survey multiple times. To view the survey, please visit the following page:http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pdV8e-LldOEpQw6k3-ovifg
Once I have enough data, I'll post the results for everyone to see. With your help, this will be the most comprehensive collection of hardware feedback that's ever been gathered for SketchUp.
.Great Survey.. the final one is here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pdV8e-LldOEpQw6k3-ovifg&hl=en
I'm looking at getting either a Geforce 8500GT Mg 512MB or upgrading to Geforce 9500GT Mg
512MB video card for a new PC (Core2 Quad, Asus P5 pro motherboard)... I'll be running Vista home premium.After looking at the results in the survey I kind of wonder if I am heading in a safe direction with the 9500 GT videocard. Has anyone had "excellent" results with one of these using Vista?
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Just a short note on processors and GPU's. Because SketchUp is not multi core aware but it is clock dependant, an inexpensive but high clock dual core CPU will actually give you faster results than a slower quad core cpu. I recommend a dual core so that the OS and other apps such as virus scans etc can run on the first core leaving you with an empty core for sketchup. This only applies to sketchup though, as soon as you use a good renderer like Indigo the quad core even with slightly slower clocks per core will vastly outrun the dual core. as for the graphics, I would look into linux game benchmarks to find out about OpenGL performance as this is the main api used by linux. oddly on an old ati rage 128 that I have in an old laptop, sketchup is actually usable under linux and wine but totally useless under win2k. That being said for a budget minded system for sketchup I would buy a fast AMD dual core cpu like an 5600X2 and the best video card I could afford (check out tomshardware vga lists for the current month and buy something recommended between $125 and $200) 4GB of ram and a fast HD. All of this should set you back between $450 and $600 (less in the US). for rendering you need something bigger or you could use a commercial render farm like ranch computing and save yourself a crapload of money while getting awesome performance (renders for as little as $10) I run a system similar to this and upgrade just behind the curve for cheap every 2 years. And I can make my own renders but would love to have a few quad cores sitting around to make into render pigs, running linux of course. Just my thoughts on the best bang for my limited pc bucks.
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I use Sketchup extensively, at work and home. At work I use Core2 6600 2.4GHz, 2G ram and Geforce 9600 GT.
At home, I got Quad Core Q6600 running 3.3 GHz OCed, 8G ram, and ATI EAH 3870. Comparing these two, work computer is faster in sketchup (didn’t make much difference in 32bit XP pro or Vista x64 home system. 4G Ram vs 8G Ram). So I updated the driver at home, but still slower. Then I knowticed something in Preferences OpenGL Capabilities box. Home system had only 1 True Color (# -4 Colors -True Color Precision –Medium Shadows –Yes Anti-Alias 0x) , while work had 3 True Color (# -16,28,40 Colors -True Color Precision –Medium Shadows –Yes Anti-Alias 0x,2x,4x) so I did some surching on the net and found this site: http://www.geeks3d.com/?page_id=7 This shows NVIDIA Forceware had more OpenGL extensions than ATI Catalyst. In my conclusion, Video Card driver Compatibility to OpenGL is most important for Sketchup.
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